Think You Could Postpone Death to See a Relative? Think Again

From a JAMA embargo release:

Many of us think that the terminally ill can postpone their deaths so that they can see a relative, experience their last birthday or enjoy a special holiday - sadly, this is a myth, according to a new study. The study looked at the records of 300,000 cancer patients who died in Ohio, USA, between 1989-2000. The study found that they did not have the ability, or the desire, to wait till after Christmas, their birthdays or Thanksgiving before they died.

"For Christmas, Thanksgiving, or the individual's birthday, during the 12-year period there was no significant difference in the proportion of patients dying in the week after the event compared with the proportion dying in the week before the event," the researchers write. "Although overall birthday data showed no effect, women dying of cancer were more likely to die during the week before their birthday compared with the following week. Men showed no significant differences. In no subgroup was a statistically significant decrease of deaths observed in the week before the event."

"Although we cannot eliminate the possibility that a small number of dying cancer patients have the ability to control the timing of their death, the proportion would have to be much smaller than that previously reported," the authors write. " Š analysis of thousands of cancer deaths shows no pattern to support the concept that 'death takes a holiday.'"

-Dominic Sisti [from MCW]

Conflicts of Interest Everywhere

The Lancet is engaged in scandalous destruction and obfuscation of data on the relationship between abortion and breast cancer. So goes the story on Businesswire, in which an editorial by Ed Furton in Ethics and Medics journal is credited with making the charge. The story announces the finding by the ethics journal as though Lancet has been caught in a real moral morass. But ... Ethics and Medics, it turns out, is a publication of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, and their editorial was highlighted by the Coalition of Abortion and Breast Cancer. Now who would guess that the charges in the editorial involve the claim that the Lancet and cancer research community in general are deliberately "corrupting scientific research examining the abortion-breast cancer link."

JAMA is running a great set of articles on the relationship between ethics and the bioscience business; Psaty and colleagues review "Potential for Conflict of Interest in the Evaluation of Suspected Adverse Drug Reactions: Use of Cerivastatin and Risk of Rhabdomyolysis," and Brian Strom replies. Fontanarosa, Rennie and DeAngelis discuss drug withdrawals in an accompanying article. Jeremy Sugarman reviews Margaret Eaton's book Ethics and the Business of Bioscience. (subscription required).

Alternative Medicine: What are the Ethics of Research?

Maurice Bernstein found this great new (oops - from January - thanks Bob C) piece from Miller, Emanuel, Rosenstein, and Straus in JAMA. Also, Dr. Mo's own reflections on CAM are pretty interesting.

Military Medical Ethics

JAMA clued me in on this new two-volume set on medical ethics in the military.